Joe's first half of SB

To touch on my first week of vaca, which I never got around to blogging on.

Barcelona:

A very fun city, I met up with 15-20 other University of Illinois students. Besides that it is a little dangerous (lots of robberies and such – we stuck to taxi’s at night) it was a lot of fun. Sagrada Familia (a Catholic church they’ve been building for over 50 years and still have 20 years to go) may be the coolest man made thing I’ve seen on the trip. Google it.

Granada:

Very nice change of pace after the up-tempo Barcelona. I got to try Tapas (free food with drinks) and in general relax. This was also the first time I’ve been able to put my four years of Spanish to practice (they speak Catalyn in Barcelona – who knew?). I was pleasantly surprised at how well this went. Despite my Spanish skills, I still had one main miscommunication for the trip - at McDonalds. I ordered a cheeseburger, and was given a McChicken with only half a bun (picture below). Not sure why me and McDonalds are not seeing eye to eye, but at least this time I got something to eat and not 3 large cokes.

After this week I left for Leeds, where I met my family. Luckily for me and any of the readers out there, Evan and his journalism prowess blogged on all that for me. I’m doing my best to pick up on some of his styles, but it seems I will remain the Engineer of the family. I am working on recruiting him to write for me the rest of the trip.

I have to say it was a vacation of a lifetime to have the family out here with me. I am extremely privileged to be doing all this and am particularly thankful I was able to share that with them. It happened so fast it seems surreal, but my mom and Aunt Jeanie really did have everything planned out to a T. I would like to thank them and anyone else who gave advice or a little convincing to get them all here.

Things I learned

1.) Sleeping on a hard wood floor for four nights is not recommended if you don’t like neck, back, hip, or shoulder pains.

2.) Carrying your wallet in your front pocket is safer and a must for some European cities. Just be prepared to have a mini heart attack every time you reach to your back pocket and your wallet isn’t there.

3.) A couple of us guys were going to cook for the girls in Barcelona. We attempted to do Uncle Pat’s pizza recipe, only to realize that we didn’t know the names of half the ingredients in Spanish. We made pasta instead, but we accidentally used tomato paste instead of sauce. This is a definite no, no, if you’re attempting to impress ladies with cooking skills.

4.) Savor that in American water and bread at restaurants is free. It’s not like that in Europe.

5.) Having the family come was not only an opportunity of a lifetime; it also meant real hotels, restaurants, transportation & preordered tickets. Best of all they were free (for me and Evan at least)

God Bless,

Joe